Why anybody puts himself or herself through the wringer of running for public office remains a mystery—especially with the demands of raising so much money, the total lack of privacy for you and your family, and the need to put up with all the insufferable party hacks you meet on the campaign trail. “You must be accessible to every fool who wants to see you,” writes Gore Vidal in his classic novel Washington, D.C., “since the only person who can never escape a bore is the man who needs his vote.”
I guess I ran for office for the same reasons every other candidate does. It’s mostly a desire to do some good and improve people’s lives. It’s also the burning need to be recognized, admired, approved, and fawned over. As my old boss Peter Behr used to joke, “Politics is the only fatal disease that those who have it want to die from.”
So that’s why I did it: the desire both to make a difference and to be the center of attention. In other words, I ran for office for the same reasons I joined the seminary.
In 1988, U.S. senator Pete Wilson was up for reelection. Wilson, former state assemblyman and former mayor of San Diego, was a good man, a moderate Republican, yet one of America’s most boring politicians, with nothing to show after six years in Washington. To me, this looked like the chance to do something I’d been wanting to do for a long time.
My first move was to convince ten friends to contribute $500 each for a statewide public opinion poll that showed that while I had little name recognition statewide, I had far more name recognition than Pete Wilson in Southern California—and that’s where all the votes were! National campaign strategist Bob Squier and his partner, Carter Eskew, flew out from Washington, reviewed the poll results, and encouraged me to take the plunge.
A few nights later, at the end of my commentary, I announced that I was leaving KABC-TV to run for U.S. senator from California—and headed directly to my very first fund-raiser, at the home of Ira and Adele Yellin. A few weeks later, Tom Hayden and then-wife Jane Fonda hosted a reception for me at their home in Venice.
My first break was a call from a dynamic young Beverly Hills developer named Albert Gersten, who volunteered to be chairman of my campaign. We sealed the deal the next day at his beach house in Malibu. Gersten was wealthy and politically well connected. He and I flew to Sacramento in his private jet to seek Assembly Speaker Willie Brown’s endorsement but came home empty-handed. We then flew to Washington, where Gersten hired noted campaign strategist Ray Strother to produce our campaign commercials.
While in Washington, I made three obligatory stops for any senate candidate. First, a meeting with Senator John Kerry, then head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who promised me the DSCC’s full support—if I won the primary. Next, Tom Dine, head of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who told me that, even though Wilson might not be good on other issues, he was a solid vote for Israel and they were sticking with him. I also met with Jim Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, who promised to spread the word that I was open-minded on the Middle East and believed the Palestinian people, like the Israelis, deserved their own homeland.
Gersten and I eventually parted company over direction of the campaign, but he was a valuable, colorful, and wholly unpredictable ally. Out of the blue, he called me one day to say, “We have to do something about those bags under your eyes.” He’d already made an appointment for me the next morning with a plastic surgeon. I declined.
My most embarrassing moment with Gersten came when he summoned me to his office in late 1987. I had no idea why. We chatted for a few minutes when, suddenly, the door opened and in walked Senator Al Gore, gearing up to run for president in 1988. I just sat there as Gore made his pitch on why he, a liberal Democrat from the South, was the party’s best choice. Then, to my total surprise, Gersten told Gore he couldn’t help him because he’d decided to support only one candidate in 1988—namely, me! Gore just glared at me.
RESCUE FROM NICARAGUA
My campaign team and I were convinced we had a good shot at Pete Wilson, but we had to win the Democratic primary first against Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy, another good man, but just as boring as Wilson. Our problem was that, as the establishment candidate, McCarthy had locked up all the endorsements of big-name Democrats and labor unions. The only way to win was to generate some buzz.
One evening, while we were brainstorming, good friend (and now state senator) Steve Glazer came up with a wild idea: I should go to Lebanon and rescue Anglican Church official Terry Waite, who’d been held hostage by Hezbollah since 1987. Great idea, I responded, but I had zero connections in Lebanon.
Then I remembered that, based on my previous visit, I did have several important contacts in Nicaragua, where American James Denby had recently been arrested by the Sandinistas. Bingo! Steve said, “Let’s go to Nicaragua instead.” And the race to free Denby was underway.
On one level, it was a noble cause to free an American citizen held captive by a hostile country. On the other level, politics. To be honest, we didn’t know that much about Denby, and didn’t care. He’d been shot down flying his small plane over Nicaragua on God knows what mission. Drugs? Aid to the Contras? Mere adventure? For all we knew he might have been a CIA spy. All we really cared about was the good publicity we’d get for my senate campaign by springing him.
For such a bold and brazen move, we needed a bold and brazen team leader, and I had the perfect person in mind: fellow Jerry Brown colleague Llewellyn Werner, twenty years my junior, a freewheeling campaign aide who was always given the toughest assignments—and who always delivered.
Werner jumped at the chance. He and I flew to Nicaragua with Lydia Brazon, a native Nicaraguan from Los Angeles who was part of the group with whom I’d first traveled there. Thanks to her connections, we met first with Interior Minister Tomás Borge, where we laid out our case for freeing Denby. He was worth nothing to the Sandinistas in prison, we argued, but freeing him might win some goodwill in Washington, where Congress was about to vote on the Reagan administration’s request for aid to the Contras.
Borge listened carefully, and then, after grilling us about whom we knew in Washington, he proposed a deal: We go back to Washington, see what promises we could wrangle out of our friends in Congress, and then come back and report to him. We agreed.
The next morning, before we left for the airport, Borge arranged a brief visit with Denby at a safe house in Managua. Denby was as surprised to see us as we were to see him. He assured us he was in good health and being treated well by his captors. But he refused to talk about what he was doing in Nicaragua in the first place. We didn’t care. We just wanted to get him out of there.
After a brief stop in LA, I flew to Washington, where I met with good friend Howard Berman, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He immediately grasped the potential payoff of a Denby release and promised to talk with other Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. That evening in our second meeting, he advised that, while Democratic leaders could offer no guarantees, they did believe that the release of Denby would greatly increase their chances of blocking financial aid to the Contras.
With that assurance, Llew Werner, Lydia Brazon, and I returned to Nicaragua, this time with a couple of extra players. I recruited a longtime friend, Dr. Mike Witte, founder of the West Marin Clinic and fluent Spanish speaker, to accompany us in order to examine Denby and assess his medical condition. Also at Llew’s suggestion, we invited Los Angeles Times senior political reporter George Skelton, on one condition: that the entire adventure was “off the record” until and unless we told him otherwise. Finally, just in case, I asked Los Angeles businessman and leading peace activist Aris Anagnos to charter a private plane and stand by for a rescue mission if we proved successful.
Once in Managua, we informed the Interior Ministry we were back. And waited. And waited. Two nights later, we were having dinner in a downtown restaurant when the manager called me to the phone. Commandant Borge wanted to see us right away.
Lydia, Llew, and I informed Borge of my meetings with congressional Democrats and their belief that Denby’s release could help block funding for the Contras. But, we emphasized, it was important to move quickly. He listened carefully, then, sphinxlike, said that while he could make no promise, things were looking good. We should make all necessary preparations, he advised, while keeping everything top secret. On the spot, like something right out of a Le Carré novel, we dubbed the entire operation “Bogey”—the name of Llew Werner’s dog.
Acting on Borge’s cautious assurances, I asked Aris Anagnos to fire up his chartered jet and get to Managua as soon as possible. As the final member of our team, he brought along Llew’s girlfriend (now wife), Yale- and Stanford-educated attorney Martha Sanchez.
The next evening, our entire team met again with Borge, who told us Denby would be released to us the next morning, provided the government’s decision was approved by the Nicaraguan Supreme Court. Borge then invited us all to join him (and his well-armed security guards) at a Managua dance hall, where he shamelessly hit on and danced with the attractive Martha Sanchez all evening, while Llew steamed nearby. When I teased Llew about it later, he groused, “What was I supposed to do? They were all slinging AK-47s.”
We danced and drank until well after midnight. The next morning, with little opportunity to prepare, Martha went off to court by herself to argue for Denby’s freedom before the Nicaraguan Supreme Court. Meanwhile, I called campaign manager David Calef and told him to inform reporters of our arrival that evening at LAX with a surprise guest.
A couple of hours later, Martha returned from court with good news: We’d won! Then things really went crazy. A government car picked us up and took us to the house where we’d met Denby a week earlier. We told Denby he was coming home with us to the United States. Mike Witte gave him a quick examination and declared him in good health. Sandinista officials then escorted us to the front door—and, to our surprise, a mob of reporters and TV cameras.
I made a brief statement, thanking the Sandinistas on behalf of all Americans for releasing American prisoner James Denby. Then Denby and I climbed into a jeep, escorted by Nicaraguan motorcycle police, sirens blaring, for a wild ride to the airport. Reporters on motorcycles buzzed all around us, edging up to the jeep to shout questions.
In the middle of that media madness, Denby turned to me with a big smile on his face and said, “I thought for sure Jesse Jackson was going to beat you to it!” I had no idea Jackson had already been to Managua and made his own pitch for Denby. What a riot. We had beaten Jesse at his own game.
Aris Anagnos was waiting for us at the Managua airport with his chartered jet, and we were immediately off to LAX, where we rolled up to the executive terminal and a huge gaggle of LA media, earning a front-page photo in the Los Angeles Times the next morning. Denby spent the night near the airport. I flew up to San Francisco to see Carol. Denby and I met again in Washington the following afternoon.
That evening, I briefed Howard Berman and several other members of Congress on the success of our mission. The next day, after Denby and I did a joint appearance on CBS Morning News from Washington, we held a news conference at the Capitol. Denby wobbled a little, saying he didn’t really have anything against the Contras, but insisted he still opposed the war. But at that point, it didn’t really matter what he said. His release had done the trick. The motion for Contra funding failed. Our Denby mission had achieved its most important goal.
Unfortunately, the second-most important goal didn’t work out so well. Even though I enjoyed a brief burst of positive publicity, Leo McCarthy still led in the polls and fund-raising. I truly believed I could have defeated Pete Wilson in the general election, but I realized there was no way I could best McCarthy in the primary. So I dropped out of the race, endorsed Leo, and went back to KABC-TV and KABC Radio.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
As a political activist, I had always argued that progressives could not be content with sitting on the sidelines. To bring about true progressive change, they had to get involved in some form of community services. So now, no longer a candidate, with more time on my hands, I decided it was time to practice what I preached—and I enlisted in the fight for gay rights and civil rights.
In 1989, I joined the board of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles, or MECLA, the first PAC in the country dedicated exclusively to backing candidates who supported gay rights. That was our unique focus: to endorse and raise money for gay-friendly candidates, both Democrat and Republican—although it was hard back then finding gay-friendly Republicans to endorse. And, unfortunately, still is today.
MECLA’s one big event was an annual fund-raising dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel, with many prominent state and national politicians in attendance. My first year on the board, Teddy Kennedy was our keynote speaker. The next year, our headliner was Texas governor Ann Richards, who brought the house down with her story about the importance of all political contributions, large and small.
As Governor Richards told it, Mae West was at a party in New York, when Tallulah Bankhead walked in, wearing a drop-dead, floor-length, silver fox coat. “Where’d you get that coat?” Mae wanted to know. Tallulah bragged, “Baby, I met a man with ten thousand dollars.”
Flash forward. A couple of months later, roles were reversed. This time, it was Mae West who walked into a party sporting an identical drop-dead, floor-length, silver fox coat. “Baby, did you also meet a man with ten thousand dollars?” Tallulah asked. “No, honey,” Mae proudly explained, “I met ten thousand men with one dollar.”
Even though we did a lot of good work, had a lot of fun, and supported a lot of good candidates, my memories of those days at MECLA are filled with sadness. Tragically, this was the height of the AIDS epidemic, which struck LA especially hard, long before doctors knew what was causing this dreadful disease or how to treat it. So when I think back to our board meetings and look around the table, I see the faces of so many beautiful young men—David Quarles, Peter Scott, Clyde Cairns, Sheldon Andelson, Scott Hitt, and others—lost at an early age to AIDS. I went to too many funerals and sang “Amazing Grace” too many times.
At about the same time, I was invited to join the board of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the historic civil rights organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The LA chapter was headed by its chair, Reverend James Lawson, who had organized the historic 1968 strike of sanitation workers in Memphis, and executive director Mark Ridley Thomas, who went on to hold just about every elective office available in Los Angeles: city council, state assembly, state senate, and county supervisor.
My experience at SCLC taught me a lot about the many challenges still facing African Americans in this country, especially regarding jobs, housing, schools, incarceration, and insurance. We also dealt with the serious divide between the Los Angeles Police Department and black residents of South Central LA.
I lived through the results of that divide during the O.J. trial and the riots following the verdict in the Rodney King trial. I also saw that divide, and the resulting tension, up close the first time I was called for jury duty in Los Angeles County: a drive-by robbery case in South Central LA. The defendant was a young black man.
The only witness for the prosecution was a white police officer who had made the arrest, but could not place the suspect at the scene. The only “evidence” provided of his guilt was the fact that he was black, had been seen in the general vicinity of the crime, and had the tattoo of a popular LA gang on his neck. He was young, he was black, he was a gang member, therefore, he must be guilty.
As a jury, we knew what we were expected to do: take the cop at his word and convict him. But we took our job seriously. We looked for evidence of guilt. There was none. We voted not guilty.
Hearing from a friend who was losing her eyesight how much she depended on audio books, I took on one more form of community service: volunteering once at a week at the Braille Institute in Los Angeles, recording books for the blind. Little did I realize that experience would have such a huge impact on my life.
Purely by chance, the first book I was assigned to read was Hank: The Life of Charles Bukowski by Neeli Cherkovski. I had never heard of Bukowski, but I became a big fan, began searching for signed copies of his poetry in local bookstores, and started building a big Bukowski collection I still spend too much money on. Bukowski was still alive, living in San Pedro at the time. I regret not meeting him before his death in March 1994.
PRESS FOR INSURANCE COMMISSIONER
Two years after my aborted Senate campaign, running for political office wasn’t yet out of my system. It wasn’t long before I jumped back in.
In 1988, one of the big issues on the ballot was Proposition 103, which made the position of California insurance commissioner an elected office, rather than one appointed by the governor.
I often spoke about insurance issues on television. I also served as chair of the Los Angeles County Insurance Commission, appointed by supervisor Kenny Hahn. So when Prop 103 passed, I decided to run in June 1990 for the job of California’s first elected insurance commissioner.
Again, I said goodbye on KABC, this time for good, and set about reassembling my campaign team. David Calef stepped back in as campaign manager. Joanne Ruden and Debbie Taylor headed up fund-raising.
Everybody agreed it’d be tough for a Republican to get elected insurance commissioner, so the real contest was in the Democratic primary, where there were four candidates: state senator John Garamendi; California Common Cause leader Walter Zelman; attorney/lobbyist Conway Collis; and me.
We each brought certain strengths to the campaign. But I was lucky to win the endorsement of most of California’s leading trial lawyers, many of whom had helped me in researching material for my TV commentary, including Browne Greene, Bruce Broillet, Gary Paul, and Paul Kiesel in Los Angeles; Dave Casey in San Diego; Wylie Aitken in Orange County; and Joe Cotchett, Arnold Laub, and Mary Alexander in San Francisco. I also campaigned hard for and won the official endorsement of the California Democratic Party.
I took a lot of grief from some liberals for my close association with trial lawyers. But I make no apologies, because I was proud to stand up for trial lawyers and have them stand up with me. I still consider them to be one of the greatest forces for good in America today.
Let’s face it. Most of the criticism of trial lawyers comes from big businesses who are out to screw their customers and resent lawyers getting in the way. A manufacturer marketing an unsafe baby crib. A carmaker selling a pickup truck that rolls too easily. An incompetent doctor who botches an operation and maims a person for life. The list of real, tragic cases goes on and on. Nobody would have a chance against those mighty powers without trial lawyers willing to take on the tough cases.
For average Americans, having access to a trial lawyer is more important than ever today, after the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling allowing corporations to force arbitration on consumers. It’s more difficult than ever, without the assistance of a good trial lawyer, for customers to file a class-action lawsuit.
True, there are some trial lawyers who take advantage of the system, just as there are some dishonest doctors, bankers, and insurance executives. But they don’t, or shouldn’t, tarnish the reputation of trial lawyers in general. Every one of the arguments made against trial lawyers boils down to an argument made by the haves against the have-nots. Do they take cases with no money up front, on a contingency, roll-of-the-dice basis? Yes, but if they didn’t, most people could not afford to hire an attorney in the first place. Do they and their clients get rich from punitive damages? Not as rich as you might think. But the truth is, there wouldn’t be any need for trial lawyers if companies made safe products or if insurance companies only paid a fair settlement in the first place. Do they scare the shit out of doctors? Sometimes. But doctors who do their jobs diligently and carefully have nothing to worry about.
I also received a lot of support from leaders of the entertainment industry, including MCA’s Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg; veteran Hollywood stars Ed Asner, Richard Dreyfuss, Ed Begley, Morgan Fairchild, Robert Foxworth, George Takei, and Leonard Nimoy; comedian Milton Berle; music legends Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Don Henley, and Casey Kasem; and a passel of young actors led by Rob Lowe, his brother, Chad Lowe, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
By far my most colorful supporter was Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. Two of my most successful fund-raisers, in fact, were held at the magnificent Playboy mansion in Holmby Hills. At both, Hef dutifully showed up in his trademark silk pajamas.
We four candidates battled down to the wire, but in the end, I came in second to Garamendi, who now represents California’s Third District in the U.S. Congress.
Once more, I was out of a job—and also broke, since, in a dumb move I still regret, I convinced Carol to take out a second mortgage of $100,000 on our home in Inverness in order to pump extra cash into my campaign, thereby violating one of the cardinal rules of politics: OPM. Always and only spend Other People’s Money!
But if I didn’t know how to practice politics, I still knew how to talk politics. Thanks to program director Jeff Wald, I landed another TV job as political commentator on independent channel KCOP-TV, reporting to fabled news director Bob Long. Fabled because nobody seemed to know where Long came from. Sure, he was a brilliant news director. But before that? CIA? French Foreign Legion? All we really knew and appreciated was that he had a big set of balls running the newsroom. He once complimented an anchor for having a “three-testicle voice.” A couple of times a week after the show, a clutch of us would gather with Long at the nearby Formosa Café, where he regaled us with wild stories. Bob lost a long battle to cancer in August 2016, leaving behind an army of television anchors, reporters, and producers he had mentored, now serving in TV stations across the land.
For me, a new job at KCOP, plus a weekend radio show on KFI, meant that I was, once again, back to full-time television and radio, a winning combination for me.
A SPIRITUAL HOME
As much as I enjoyed living in West Hollywood, where Carol and I now owned a townhouse, I realized there was still one thing missing: any comfort on the spiritual side. I decided to return to a church I’d first visited with Jerry Brown when he was running for reelection: the legendary First AME Church in South Central Los Angeles, led by Pastor Chip Murray.
After all my years as a Catholic, including all that time in the seminary, I never experienced a more meaningful official worship service than that first time at First AME. It brought me back to the sense of welcome and joy I knew at Glide Methodist Church in San Francisco. The congregation, literally, rocked with music and prayer. The choir was awesome. And Pastor Murray’s sermon was both inspiring and down to earth. This is what church ought to be, I remember thinking that day with Jerry Brown. So I went back, hungry for more.
I didn’t make a big deal of it. I didn’t try to play the big shot TV star. I didn’t call and announce my arrival. I just showed up one Sunday morning. The entire service and Pastor Murray’s sermon were every bit as powerful as I remembered.
So I came back the following Sunday when, to my total surprise, Pastor Murray singled me out in the congregation, introduced me, and asked me to stand and be recognized. He did that several Sundays in a row until, finally, after services, I remarked to one woman how embarrassed I was but also how impressed I was that, without any advance notice, Pastor Murray knew I was there in the congregation. She laughed out loud. “Bill,” she said, “think about it. When he looks down from that pulpit, it’s not hard to spot the one white face in the house!” I begged Pastor Murray to stop singling me out, which he did.
First AME became my new spiritual home—and that’s where I sought refuge during the Rodney King riots. Those six days were the scariest time of my life. It all started on the night of March 3, 1991, when Rodney King was pulled over by cops on the Foothill Freeway. King initially resisted arrest, whereupon he was Tasered, tackled, kicked in the head, and beaten with batons by four officers—all of it videotaped by a neighbor from his nearby balcony. That video sparked national outrage, leading to all four officers being charged with assault and use of excessive force.
The trial was moved from Los Angeles to Simi Valley, where on Wednesday, April 29, 1992, a mostly white jury acquitted all four officers—and all hell broke loose. Protestors poured into the streets, without incident at first. Then truck driver Reginald Denny stopped for a traffic light at the corner of Florence and Normandie. He was attacked by a mob, hit in the head with a rock, and dragged from the cab of his truck. Again, all of it caught on video. This time, broadcast over live television by KCOP-TV reporter Bob Tur, flying overhead in his news chopper.
Video of that violence sparked more violence, more outrage, more fear, and six days of lawlessness. After watching the video at KCOP, I proposed to news director Bob Long that I broadcast my commentary live that night from First AME, where Mayor Tom Bradley was expected to make a statement. Long agreed, and I drove to the church with the promise of a TV crew to join me later.
First AME was packed with local residents seeking refuge. There were reports of more looting and violence in the neighborhood. We could hear gunfire and smell acrid smoke from burning buildings nearby. It was soon clear that Mayor Bradley wasn’t going to show, and I wasn’t going to do my commentary, either. The area was too dangerous for the TV crew to enter.
Trapped like everyone else, I joined church members on the balcony behind the church. It was a frightening scene. From every side, we could hear gunfire and see buildings burning. Cars in the parking lot were covered with ash. None of us knew where to turn or what to do. One man asked me how I, the only white man in the crowd, was planning to get home.
“No problem,” I said. “My car’s right here in the lot. I’ll just drive home.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” he shot back. “With that face, you’ll never get out of here alive.”
Whereupon that Good Samaritan proposed a different plan of escape. We very carefully made our way to his car, parked half a block away, where he told me to lie down on the floor of the back seat, covered me with a blanket, and warned me not to move, no matter what happened. Amid much noise and shouting, with many stops and starts, twists and turns, he drove me out of South Central all the way to our home in West Hollywood. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even know that man’s name. But his courage and clear thinking may well have saved my life.
The next few days were pure hell. Life in the second-largest city in the United States was like living in a lawless zone. Any police presence, in effect, was either ineffective or nonexistent. One evening, Bob Long and I stood on the roof of the KCOP building and watched carloads of looters working their way north on La Brea Avenue, going from one side of the street to the other, breaking store windows, walking away with whatever they could carry, and then torching the businesses. No cops came. No fire trucks came. Nobody called 911, because nobody would respond.
Downstairs in his office, I told Long I was worried they might break into our studios, but Bob assured me he wasn’t worried. “I’ve got my riot kit,” he said with a big grin. He picked up his black briefcase, laid it on his desk, and opened it. Inside were three items: a bottle of scotch, a carton of cigarettes—and a handgun! “Let ’em come,” he declared. “I’m ready for ’em.” Classic Bob Long.
Outside of South Central Los Angeles, one of the hardest-hit areas was Koreatown, where our KFI radio studios were located. Koreatown became so dangerous that, for a couple of days, KFI’s entire operation secretly relocated to the home of our chief engineer in the mountains above Pasadena, where we broadcast from his living room.
Eventually, things quieted down. But the riots left 53 dead and over 2,000 injured. Officials estimated that 3,600 fires were set, destroying 1,100 buildings. Total property damage neared $1 billion.
Years later, when protests against abuse of force by police officers broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, for me it was déjà vu. I flashed back to Los Angeles and the Rodney King riots. There were so many similarities.
Once again, peaceful protests soon turned to violence. Once again, the trigger was excessive use of force by white police officers against young black men. And, once again, all police officers involved escaped punishment. For a while, after Ferguson, Baltimore, and other examples of officer abuse, there was a lot of positive talk about police reform, but little action. And now Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going in the opposite direction: rolling back reforms already in place and letting all other police departments off the hook.
That is a serious mistake that will have disastrous consequences. Until we recognize the inherent racial bias of some white police officers and some white members of juries, until we accept the reality of white officers deliberately targeting young black men, even going so far as to kill unarmed black men with impunity, until we deal with that problem by getting rid of those bad apples, better vetting and training new recruits, and hiring new officers who reflect the face of the community they serve … the racial tension in many American cities will just continue to percolate until it breaks out again in violence. When will we learn?
Strangely enough, as traumatic as the Rodney King riots were, that turned out to be not the only war zone I found myself in that year.
WAR IN CROATIA
In fact, I was soon in the middle of an actual war, between Yugoslavia and Croatia, thanks to a long friendship with Orange County businessman Milan Panić.
I could write a whole book about Milan Panić, and several have. He’s led an incredible life and played a big part in mine.
Panić is a true American success story. Born in Belgrade, and champion of his country’s national cycling team, Panić defected from Yugoslavia to Austria and then Germany. A year later, he arrived in New York with his wife, two children, two suitcases, and $20 in his pocket. From the East Coast, he made his way to Los Angeles and Caltech. In 1960, with $200 cash, he founded ICN Pharmaceuticals, which he built up into a multibillion-dollar business, best known for developing the miracle drug ribavirin, or Virazole. Panić resigned as chairman in 2002 and founded MP Biomedicals, which he led until selling the company in 2016.
I met Milan in 1978, during Jerry Brown’s reelection campaign. He counts among the most generous Democratic donors in California. He’s also a brilliant, hard-driving, phenomenally successful businessman. Ever looking for new business opportunities, Milan saw a ready-made one with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. He began in Serbia, his former homeland, by convincing Yugoslavia’s dictator Slobodan Milošević to sell him Galenika, the state-owned pharmaceutical company.
For the first time anywhere in Eastern Europe, Milan offered employees stock ownership in the company, and he even published a pamphlet on how capitalism worked. He next expanded operations into Russia, with pharmaceutical labs in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. At the time, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, I called him “the Ross Perot of the Balkans.”
Milan invited me to Belgrade in August 1991 to interview Milošević and report on the war in Croatia for KCOP-TV. News director Bob Long gave his approval, so off I went, after dutifully promising Carol I’d go nowhere near the combat zone.
The night I arrived in Belgrade, Dušan Mitević, the head of Radio Television Belgrade, Yugoslavia’s state-owned media, met me in the lobby of my hotel to inform me that Panić would be an hour late for dinner. Over drinks, and later over dinner, he proceeded to bore me with the history of Serbian-Croatian relations, starting in the twelfth century.
The next morning, I discovered it was all part of the plan. When I showed up at the presidential palace for my interview with Milošević, we were all ready to go when a press aide opened the door to the president’s private office—only to reveal Milošević talking with Mitević, the man who’d briefed me the night before. He was prepping Milošević on prepping me.
In flawless English (he had, after all, worked in New York as a banker for several years), Milošević defended Serbia’s war against Croatia as only one step in a righteous campaign to keep Yugoslavia intact. It was just like America’s own Civil War, he insisted, which we fought to prevent the South from seceding from the Union. He attacked the Croatian people as antidemocratic forces who supported the Nazis in World War II and even operated a concentration camp on Croatian soil.
At the end of the interview, Milošević beamed. “Good, now we drink.” He clapped his hands, and in walked an aide bearing a silver tray filled with shot glasses of whiskey and orange juice. It was only 9:00 a.m., I’d been in Belgrade less than twenty-four hours, and here I was, knocking back shots with Slobodan Milošević.
Early the next morning, with a TV crew and translator, I secretly left Belgrade for the Vojvodina area of Serbia. Our plan was to sneak into Croatia and interview residents of Vukovar to get their side of the Serbia-Croatia conflict. Because of the war, there was no direct access to Croatia, so we hooked up with a local partisan who took us to a remote spot on the Danube where, for a price, a local fisherman agreed to ferry us across the river.
Walking to a little village on the outskirts of Vukovar, we were surprised to find stores closed, streets deserted, and, aside from a couple of other journalists, nobody in sight. We soon found out why. A couple of Serbian military officers rounded us up and took us to a nearby elementary school, where they informed us that the Serbian Army was about to launch a siege of Vukovar.
Sure enough, we soon heard fighter planes overhead and the sound of bombs dropping nearby. The school had been requisitioned as a triage station, and as we were leaving, the first victims of the bombing were being brought in, including one soldier who’d lost a leg. We decided to get the hell of there.
First, ignoring my promise to Carol, we walked a few blocks closer to Vukovar, where I quickly did a stand-up with fighter planes dropping bombs behind me. Then we hurried to the river and our fisherman friend, who advised us to lie in the bottom of his boat to avoid getting shot on our way back to Serbia. It was my one and only time anywhere near the front lines of a war. I had no desire to become another Peter Arnett.
That first trip to Serbia was not the last. But on my next visit, I was engaged in a different kind of war: a political war between Slobodan Milošević and Milan Panić for president of Serbia, which actually had its roots in the first Bush White House.
POLITICS SERBIAN-STYLE
About a year later, Milan Panić called again with an intriguing new twist: Slobodan Milošević had offered to appoint him prime minister of Yugoslavia—on the promise that Milošević would step down in six months so Milan could step up as president, which I didn’t believe for a minute. “Stop! Don’t agree to anything,” I pleaded with Milan, “until we can talk.”
When I caught up with Milan the next morning, it was clear he’d already decided to accept Milošević’s offer. The only question was how. Because there were U.S. sanctions against Yugoslavia, Panić would need a waiver from the George H. W. Bush White House—all the more difficult since, out of all the hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions he’d made over the years, Panić had never given one dollar to a Republican.
Never having learned to say no to Milan, I agreed to help. My first call was to campaign strategist Bob Squier, who said he didn’t have any more access to the Bush White House than I did. But Bob suggested that I call his then weekly debate partner on CBS Morning News: Roger Ailes, former political adviser to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who then, long before Fox News, had his own consulting firm.
Using Squier’s name, I managed to get Roger on the phone and made my pitch. For the White House, there was no downside to this proposition, I argued. If Panić were successful in replacing Milošević and ending Serbian aggression, Bush could take credit for it. If Panić failed, Bush could say he’d done everything possible to bring an end to the war in Croatia. Roger promised to make a couple of phone calls and called me back ten minutes later. “I can’t tell you who,” he reported, “but I talked to somebody high in the White House. I think we may be able to do something. But I have to meet your guy first.”
After a red-eye flight from California, Panić and I showed up in Roger’s midtown Manhattan office the next morning. We were still making small talk when Roger excused himself to take a call from the White House. He came back five minutes later to tell us President Bush would grant Panić a waiver from U.S. sanctions. In early July 1992, he was sworn in as the Serbian-born, American-bred, millionaire prime minister of Yugoslavia. That’s when the fun began.
Once in office, Panić called for ending Milošević’s latest war, against Bosnia, within one hundred days, thereby setting up an inevitable clash with Milošević—who, of course, reneged on his promise to resign. Panić then decided to run against Milošević for president of Serbia and summoned his political allies from the United States to Belgrade. Political strategist Doug Schoen led the campaign team, assisted by former senator Birch Bayh and my former campaign director David Calef. I parachuted in for a couple of weeks.
Panić turned out to be a born candidate. His campaign slogan was “Change Now!” His message of nonviolence and economic optimism was exactly what the Serbian people were yearning for after years of war and recession under Milošević. His speeches, delivered in a mix of American-accented Serbian and Serbian-accented English, were amusing and endearing. And crowds loved him. Twenty thousand showed up for his first campaign rally in the city of Niš, a Milošević stronghold. His final campaign rally in Belgrade drew a crowd of 150,000—bigger than Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders!
Obviously worried about Panić, Milošević tried to suppress the vote in every way possible. As documented by campaign manager Doug Schoen in The New York Times, Milošević’s apparatchiks began by cleansing the voter rolls of anyone who had not voted in the spring elections, which the opposition had largely boycotted. As a result, on Election Day, December 20, 5–10 percent of voters were turned away because their names were no longer on the voter rolls. And college students, who were overwhelmingly Panić supporters, were curiously required to report to campus on Election Day to qualify for subsidized student housing, preventing many of them from getting to their local polling places.
Exit polls nationwide showed Panić and Milošević in a dead heat at 47 percent. In Belgrade, 80–90 percent of voters said they’d voted for Panić. Yet, in the end, official returns showed that Milošević crushed Panić, 56 percent to 34. Bullshit! There’s no doubt what happened: Panić won that election, but Milošević counted the votes. Even the Helsinki Commission concluded that the presidential election was “neither free nor fair.”
The day after the election, a top general warned Panić that he should leave the country immediately or end up a dead man. Panić went back to California and ICN Pharmaceuticals. A decade later, Milošević was arrested, charged with war crimes, and tried at The Hague, where he died in his prison cell of a heart attack in March 2006.
DEMOCRATIC STATE CHAIR
Once you’re bitten by politics, you’re bitten forever. At least I was. Even after running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and California insurance commissioner, I still couldn’t get politics out of my system. All I needed was an office I could run for and win. Early in 1993, one dropped into my lap.
Phil Angelides, a good friend from Sacramento, was chair of the California Democratic Party. With his term about to expire, Phil called and asked if I’d be interested in running to succeed him.
For me it was, I must admit, a stretch. Despite all my political experience, I’d never been involved with the party as such. I’d never been to a state convention. Never walked into a party headquarters. On the other hand, Bill Clinton had just been elected president. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were the newly elected senators from California. It looked like a fun time to be California Democratic chair. So I decided to go for it.
But it wasn’t automatic. First, you had to run and win. I teamed up with labor leader Arlene Holt of AFSCME, running for vice chair. Michael Ganley, a labor organizer from San Francisco, ran the campaign. Our opponent was Steve Barr, a young graduate student from LA. We traveled up and down the state, appearing before county Democratic committees, meeting with members of the party’s executive committee, and debating the issues. When the votes were counted at the state convention in Sacramento, Arlene and I prevailed.
The next three years were an exciting blur of politics by day and TV by night.
During the day, I worked at party headquarters in West Hollywood; in the evening, I offered my political commentary on KCOP-TV’s 10:00 p.m. newscast.
At least once a month, I’d spend the day in Sacramento at northern party headquarters.
Phil had left the state party in good shape, under executive director Susan Kennedy. When she left to work for Senator Feinstein, Kathy Bowler took over the reins. Brian Wolff was my capable executive assistant. Political director Bob Mulholland rounded out the team. I still can’t believe some of the crazy stunts he talked me into as state chair, most of them aimed at Republican governor Pete Wilson. I once appeared at a Republican convention in Orange County, carrying a large box marked Preparation H, claiming Wilson was going to need it if he continued to straddle the fence on every issue. And in 1996, when Wilson announced his run for president in New York’s Battery Park, I was on the scene, dressed in a lizard costume, accusing him of being a political chameleon.
We also had a great team of officers at the CDP: Arlene Holt, first vice chair; Angela Alioto, second vice chair; controller Tal Finney; and state treasurer Gary Paul. Former chair Nancy Pelosi pitched in whenever we needed help in California or Washington. Christine Pelosi, born with her mother’s zest for politics, served as chair of the rules committee.
At the time, Reverend Jesse Jackson was the best orator in the Democratic Party. Richard Nixon even praised him as “the only real poet in American politics today.” We enlisted Jackson’s help in voter registration drives, where he’d fly in, give a great speech, inspire the crowd, and then take off. To those who complained he never stayed around for the hard work, Jackson merely shrugged. “I’m a tree shaker, not a jelly-maker,” he once told columnist Clarence Page.
Hands down, the most fun of being state chair was hanging out with President Bill Clinton. He came to the West Coast often, and every time he showed up, north or south, I was there. Over time, we became friends. He turned one state convention into a party for my fifty-fifth birthday. Even though his visits were usually on official government or national party business, he always took time out to help the state party. And he filled his administration with California transplants, including chief of staff Leon Panetta, White House aides John Emerson and Tom Epstein, and DNC secretary Alice Travis Germond.
There were many memorable moments with Clinton, one of which turned into a near disaster. When the president started to gear up for his reelection campaign, Harold Ickes asked me to help with his fund-raising effort in California, long the ATM for Democratic candidates. Not wanting to organize yet another fund-raising dinner, I suggested a different approach: ten donors who would contribute $100,000 each to spend an hour “discussing the issues” with the president. The White House agreed.
A couple of weeks later, Clinton was in San Francisco for some official event, after which, right on time, he walked into my suite at the Fairmont Hotel, shook hands with the ten donors I’d recruited, sat down, and asked each of them to introduce themselves and tell him what was on their minds. Everything went smoothly until Doug McCarron, then president of the Southern California Conference of Carpenters, got his chance. Known for being an effective but outspoken labor leader, McCarron told Clinton how disappointed his members were, after having worked so hard to get him elected. “When I go to my union halls today,” he said, “All I hear is: ‘Bill Clinton, asshole!’”
Did he just call the president of the United States an asshole? I wanted to crawl out of the room. I looked over at Clinton. His face was red. You could see the veins in his neck throbbing. I half expected him either to jump up and punch McCarron or storm out of the room. But he did neither. For what seemed like forever, he just nodded. Then he calmly said he was sorry to hear that, he understood their frustration, and he’d look into the issues McCarron’s members were concerned about. Nuclear warfare narrowly avoided.
Later, the president told me that, with that one exception, he actually enjoyed the format. With little hassle, and nothing but an hour of his time, we’d raised a cool $1 million. We followed up with a similar event in Los Angeles and one in Washington, where ten donors contributed $100,000 each for lunch with the president at the Hay-Adams hotel.
The truth is, President Clinton loves getting out and meeting people. Period. One evening, I joined him and the First Lady for a big fund-raiser at the fabulous Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, preceded by a private reception for major donors at the beach club. I was walking with Hillary from the earlier event up to the hotel when I noticed the president was missing. Where’s the president? I wondered. I asked her.
“Oh, he’s probably still back there, shaking hands,” Hillary said.
Sure enough, when I walked back to the beach, there was nobody left—no donors, no White House aides, no hangers-on—nobody but the president of the United States and the waitstaff. Clinton was going from serving table to serving table, shaking hands with every one of them.
The day before one of Clinton’s visits to Los Angeles, the deputy chief of staff, Harold Ickes, called to tell me the president was going to play a round of golf the next afternoon and asked me to find another player to round out his foursome. I immediately called supermarket king Ron Burkle, head of the Yucaipa Companies and one of our major donors. At first, Ron tried to beg off, insisting he hadn’t played golf in years. But I persisted. “Ron, this may be your only chance ever to play golf with the president of the United States. Get your ass out to the nearest driving range and practice your swing.” Which he did.
The next evening, I asked the president how Burkle made out on the course. The ever-political Clinton smiled and said, “Let me put it this way. Ron’s a fast learner.”
Which reminds me of my favorite Clinton golf tale. A couple of years later, when I was already cohost of Crossfire, Susie and Mark Buell, our good friends from Bolinas, came over for breakfast in Washington, after which Susie and I drove Mark to the White House for a golf date with the president. They played on the blue course at the Congressional Country Club, a course I knew well. Just before the green on the ninth hole is a huge swale, into which Clinton sank his second shot. His three partners made it across and walked to the green to wait for the president.
Mark relates how the three of them watched as the most powerful man on the planet walked up the fairway and disappeared from view down into the swale. A couple of minutes later, a ball comes soaring out of nowhere and lands on the green. Then they see Clinton—first the top of his hat, then his head, then his shoulders, and finally his whole body emerge from the swale. Clinton walked over, spotted his ball lying on the green, broke into a big grin, and remarked, “Look at that. I get myself into some deep shit sometimes, but I’m pretty good at getting out of it!” He didn’t have to mention Monica Lewinsky.
President Clinton was also up to speed on pop culture, far more than I was. On one visit, I flew with him on Air Force One from Los Angeles to Oakland, where I introduced him at a big rally. At the end of his remarks, he was still waving to the crowd while I was staring at the program, wondering what the hell I could say about the next speaker, somebody named Queen Latifah, whom I’d never even heard of.
Suddenly, over the noise of the crowd, I heard a husky voice whispering in my left ear. “Let me do this.” I looked up and, sure enough, there was the president, asking me to let him introduce Queen Latifah. Which, of course, I happily did. They were already best buds.
On one of his first visits to California, Carol had given the president one of her beautiful, hand-woven scarves, which he proceeded to wear on every outdoor winter occasion, including meetings with foreign leaders. Years later, on December 31, 2003, we were dismayed to see a photo of him arriving with Hillary the night before at a Broadway theater, wearing a different, rather god-awful scarf. So, for the first time, I used a private number I’d been given and called him at home in Chappaqua.
Clinton himself answered the phone. I wished him Happy New Year, we chatted, and then I told him there was another reason I’d called: “Obviously, we’ve let you down.” A puzzled Clinton asked: “How’d you let me down?”
When I explained we’d let him down by not sending him a new Carol Press scarf, so he was forced to wear that ugly one, Clinton said: “Well, you know something about that scarf? It was Hillary’s Christmas present.”
Needless to say, my face was red and my foot firmly planted in mouth. I laughed and said: “I take it back. It’s the most beautiful scarf I ever saw—and be sure to tell Hillary.”
Next to Bill, the most fun was spending time with First Lady Hillary Clinton. She didn’t come to California quite as often, but every time she did, like Bill, she was most generous with her time for the state party. She did a couple of fund-raisers for us. She also appeared as a guest on my radio show.
Two things I quickly learned about Hillary Clinton. One, in private, she has a wicked sense of humor and an infectious laugh. I once rode on Air Force Three with her and then Assembly Speaker Willie Brown for the short flight from Sacramento to San Francisco. She kept us both in stitches.
Two, she’s brilliant, a real policy wonk, and knows the issues better than anybody. No, she’s not as good a campaigner as her husband, Bill. But who is?
The first time I noticed this about Hillary was at a Los Angeles fund-raiser for Kathleen Brown, Jerry’s sister, who was running for governor of California. I was sitting alongside Hillary at the head table. Brown spoke first and in her remarks briefly touched on the notion that the more women succeed, the better the nation succeeds. There’s a direct cause and effect between the two. Hillary turned to me and said, “That’s a very important point, but I never thought of it that way before.”
Hillary spoke next and, without any prepared remarks, picked up on Kathleen’s theme and expanded it, speaking for at least twenty minutes on how important it was that women do well, in politics as in any other field, because when women do well, America does well—and citing several examples to make her point. I was blown away, because I knew she was doing it off the cuff. And I knew at that moment that her career in public service was not going to end with the end of her term as First Lady.
I once introduced Hillary as one of the people I admire most in the world, and I still mean it. She was an outstanding First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, U.S. senator from New York, and secretary of state. I supported her over Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary. I supported Bernie Sanders over her in the 2016 Democratic primary, but I enthusiastically threw my support to Hillary Clinton once she secured the Democratic nomination. She would have made an outstanding president—but why and how she lost the election to Donald Trump is the subject of a thousand other books, not this one.
During my three years as state chair, I also spent a lot of time with Vice President Al Gore, went to the World Cup match between Brazil and Italy with him, flew on Air Force Two, and introduced him at several events. I encouraged him to run for president in 2000 and promised to sign up full-time for his campaign—but by that time, I was already at CNN and unavailable.
Juggling my volunteer position as state Democratic chair with my paid position as TV commentator and radio talk show host was a challenge, but I managed to pull it off for the most part—with one notable exception. One Saturday, I left our executive committee meeting in San Diego and flew to LA to host my regular radio show. One of our topics that afternoon was a recent statement by some conservative Christian preacher that parents should never be seen naked in front of their children, which I thought was ridiculous. Carol and I often stepped out of the shower in front of our sons when they were young, and they thought nothing of it.
When one woman called and accused me of setting a bad example for our sons, I went ballistic. “What are you ashamed of?” I asked. “Are you ashamed of your body? I’m not ashamed of my body. I love my body. I love every part of my body.” Then, in an affirmation heard not only across Southern California but all the way across the country, I added, “I love my genitals!”
What was I thinking? Obviously, I wasn’t thinking at all. On Monday morning, the Reliable Sources column of The Washington Post featured the headline I LOVE MY GENITALS, with a photo of Michelangelo’s David and a full transcript of my colorful remarks on KFI. And I soon got a call from the White House suggesting that—in light of the fact that I was California Democratic Party chair and, therefore, President Clinton’s unofficial representative in the Golden State—I might try to be more circumspect in my public remarks.
That’s one lesson I didn’t learn. I would continue to get in hot water for things I said on the air. With one big difference. Soon, I not only got in trouble in California. I got in trouble everywhere. Because now I was playing on a national stage.